


all these dead gathered together

by la_victorienne



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-10
Updated: 2008-08-10
Packaged: 2018-10-16 00:44:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10560512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_victorienne/pseuds/la_victorienne
Summary: Disappearing office supplies.  An unwelcome, unruly John Hart.  Gwen, invisible, and technology lost.  Three spectacularly gory deaths, all of them Jack’s.  The laundry line of things to sort out – Jack’s snide, tetchy mood after dying and Gwen’s presence decidedly on the translucent side – leaves poor overworked and underpaid Ianto utterly exhausted.  Par for the course and it’s only Wednesday.





	

One man and the pouring rain, knees in puddles, clothing soaked through. Believe the fates when they tell you that your desperation is futile; trust them when they tell you to cut the finest thread. Into the fire he calls her name, over and over, a curse, a cry, a prayer. Limp arms and sagging mouth; no amount of divine breath will bring the messiah back to him, no matter how much unwanted life he has to give her. She is lost, as they all were, to his cruel, bitter frailty. He is always the one to sacrifice for the things that matter; why, then, must she have sacrificed everything for him?

 

_Legendry makes men believe in magic._

Ianto Jones wonders if, from some absurd side effect of living on it for a century, Jack knows how to conspire with the Rift, drive Ianto completely batty.

Clearing the leftover ooze from a few misdirected tourist aliens out of the front office he remembers this wondering – this latest mess just one in a long line of an endless week’s obstacles. Disappearing office supplies. An unwelcome, unruly John Hart. Gwen, invisible, and technology lost. Three spectacularly gory deaths, all of them Jack’s. The laundry line of things to sort out – Jack’s snide, tetchy mood after dying and Gwen’s presence decidedly on the translucent side – leaves poor overworked and underpaid Ianto utterly exhausted. Par for the course and it’s only Wednesday.

A throat clears in the doorway while he’s on his knees, scrubbing in rubber gloves and an apron, and the thought crosses Ianto’s mind as he prepares to face the possibly rude tourist in his dead girlfriend’s Betty Crocker smock that perhaps he’s being punished for something, before he stands up and adjusts his smiling mask where it sits. The sight in the doorway, however, takes his breath and ties his tongue. Perhaps this is not exactly _punishment_ , not quite.

He knows the look in her eyes, the shine in her hair. She is lost in time, not in space, and for the first time since he watched his friend Toshiko die Ianto is glad to work for Torchwood, if only to help this mysterious woman find her way back home. This mysterious woman is dangerous and elegant, more beautiful than anyone he’s ever seen, than Lisa, than Gwen, possibly more beautiful than even Jack, and he knows it’s the exotic golden glow of her travel and the shimmering lightness of her stride that makes everything so clear, renders her lines so sharp, so silver. He bows slightly, reverently, and extends a gloved hand to invite her in.

“Miss,” he fairly mumbles before he gathers his wits about him, unties his apron and removes his gloves, steps out from behind the counter. “You look lost – I hope I can help. Let me show you downstairs, introduce you to my Captain. Be wary where you step, there’s still a bit of a mess.”

He is careful to make no sudden moves, lest she think he’s untrustworthy, a murderer waiting to be unleashed. She just smiles serenely, touches his arm, and says securely and without pretence, “Thank you, Ianto Drystan Jones.”

 

_I told you to listen. Do you remember summer?_

When Jack Harkness is not alone, every hair on his body prickles. When Jack Harkness is not alone, every cell stands at arms. When Jack Harkness is not alone, there is no excuse for inattention and no permissible reason to let down the walls. And Jack Harkness takes careful precaution to never be alone. Freedom does not suit him.

He smells the golden light before the cog door rolls back, tastes the long-lost constructs and ancient, eternal magic. She is all too familiar, molded like wax from the remnants of a soul he will love past his last death into alien voices and sharp, pale, golden skin. There is a gasp, perhaps only silence, the whoosh of his breath into his body and a hard, thin line between his lips. Ianto meets cold blue eyes with a look that should make Jack hard but today just makes him want to die again, start this whole effort over.

“She’s lost in time,” he explains patiently. “Came through the Rift, I’d expect.”

Gwen flickers in and out of view, panting, frustrated with herself. Technology, lost.

Sometimes when Gwen is completely gone Jack has to be terribly careful to stay silent.

“Marcus,” the ~~thing~~ woman whispers. “Oh thank god, Marcus, I found you.”

These thick, slimy, messy emotions are wrong; her voice should not be so sweet and her hair should not be so silver. Her feet take her across the concrete before she can stop herself; his hands pull the gun from his hip before he can say a word. It is recently invisible Gwen who pulls the golden woman from certain execution. Ianto looks displeased. Jack, who will never be Marcus again, frankly doesn’t care. He keeps the gun loaded, pointed, cocked. A ghost wafts from the golden woman’s hair into Gwen’s skin, and she flickers back, darker than before. Truce.

“Your name.”

“Isolde.”

“Lies. Your name.”

“Esyllt.”

“Your _name_.”

“Yseult.”

“Yseult is a _myth_ , and you are soon to be no better. Now, tell me your name, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.” The golden woman looks down, then up again, into the darkening, into the hidden places.

“I cannot, will not, have never lied to you, Marcus. Isolde is my name, Isolde my heart.” And then she smiles a little smile, one that he could hate to love without effort. “Marcus. Marc. Marcellin. Escape your past, change your future. Where will you put me when we finally meet, if not in your precious, silent soul?”

 

_One man can change destiny. No man can merely try._

She sleeps in peaceful stillness, dreams with reckless abandon. His warm hands stroke her hair, touch her cheek, tuck the comforter closer around her.

“When you said you would find a place, I didn’t think you meant her to stay here. Otherwise I wouldn’t have let either of you go.” Jack’s holster is gone, his greatcoat put away, but he is not alone and he is not exposed. Cards close to his chest, even if Ianto can read all bluffs.

“I know. I didn’t care. She called you Marcus.” Ianto’s body is tense and coiled, legs a tender pillow and hands a gentle cage.

“My name, long before Jack. But I don’t know this woman. I have never known this woman.”

“You lost two years.”

“I would remember _her_. I would remember Isolde.”

“How do you know?”

“She would make sure of it.”

“Your future, then. No other way for her to know me, too.”

“And why give her that name?”

“You pay attention. You figure it out.” Ianto looks down at the gem, at her soft, thin skin. Strokes a finger over the valleys of her ear, places one protective hand over her body. Jack kneels by the settee, but cannot bring himself to touch this Rift-stricken thing. This future-woman. This someday-love.

When Ianto wakes again, Jack is gone and Esyllt smiles, somehow more enchanting than he remembers. She has softer lips than Jack and smaller hands than Lisa, and she kisses back only once before parting. He is content. He sees it all, and it will not break him.

 

_I could love you, so I refuse._

A tricky thing. This energy resonates in Jack’s very bones; there _are_ side-effects from living here so long. A sense of who will die. An elusive, painful, bitter knowledge. A need to make things right, to change the past and live the future. Resources. Technology, found.

Jack Harkness is not alone.

“Someday, you will remember these words.

“When you are lonely, when you are alone. You will know my voice and you will hear the truth.

“The love I give you now is only what you deserve. Unending, unconditional, unbearable. It will burn and it will chafe, but it will never leave you. With my bones dust, with my mouth silent. My love will sear you all the stronger.

“When I find you, when I touch the arms that have ever known my skin and kiss the lips that have ever known my future, I will give my heart again, just as freely. All this and what the sun touches, it is yours. Until you die for the final time. It is yours.”

He kisses her mouth once before she whirls into the fractured glass. A dying man’s wish.

 

_Do you see? Truth from legend. Beginning to end._

Marcus is lonely. Marcus is alone.

When will Isolde come back to her home?

If there were words to bring her, he would speak them; if there were men to kill, he would slay them. He knows the past and he hears the truth. Her love burns his fingers.

“You have not lost me yet.”

But he has. A long kiss, a gasping breath. Enter triumphant death.


End file.
